


another bird floating on a hurricane

by futuredescending



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: American Road Trip, Fix-It, M/M, Post V-Day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-03 09:59:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: When Eggsy Unwin travels to Kentucky to bring Harry Hart’s body back home, he begins to think that Harry is not as dead as everyone else seems to believe. With a renewed and inextinguishable hope, he embarks on a search through the post V-Day landscape of America to search for his lost love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the second Reelfic-Kingsman fest using the very wonderful film, _A Very Long Engagement_. I suck because I totally didn't finish it in time, but here is the first chapter? Also, a good chunk of this is shamelessly re-appropriated from a piece of prior writing for the rather dead Hartwin Round Robin (RIP), because, damn it, I needed that to go somewhere.

After V-Day, five Kingsman agents are reported missing or confirmed dead.

The first to be counted as missing is Percival, whose real name is Alistair Morton. He took degrees in political science and art history from Cambridge University in preparation for a life of service in Parliament, but ended up in service to Kingsman instead. Despite his intensive career, he took on the care and custody of his niece, Roxanne Morton, after his older brother and sister-in-law were killed in a car accident in France, and any previous flirtations he may have entertained with James Spencer, the then-Lancelot, had promptly ceased thereafter. On V-Day, his last known location had been in western Myanmar to stop a Rohingya village from being completely annihilated by the army.

The second, Bors, better known as Theodore ‘Teddy’ Raleigh-Bowles, has three ex-wives, five mistresses, and seven biological children across the sum of them. He had a penchant for gluttony in almost all areas of life: food, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, and women. It was only the extreme physical requirements of Kingsman that kept his worst impulses in check. Even prior to V-Day, Bors had been deep undercover in North Africa and wasn’t due to check in for several more weeks yet.

Prior to V-Day, Gawain had been Bernard Lowell. Kingsman agents weren’t supposed to overtly demonstrate any political leanings, but Bernard had kept a portrait of Margaret Thatcher next to his late wife’s photo on his desk and frequently espoused his opinions on everything from the EU to the price of milk. He had married his first love, Patricia, at age 18 and they remained happily married all the way up until her death at age 38 from a long and painful battle with ovarian cancer. They had no children, and Bernard had never remarried. He was one of the first Kingsman agents to be found after V-Day: during the signal, he hadn’t been wearing his protective Kingsman jacket and had taken three bullets to the torso, left to bleed out on the streets of Brisbane.

The fourth, Chester King, had been Kingsman’s third and longest-reigning Arthur after being voted into the position at the unheard of age of 35. His success in life had primarily benefitted from his father’s clever mind and insatiable ambitions, his mother’s immense family wealth, and his eldest brother’s estrangement and disinheritance after coming out. Chester King inadvertently played a hand in his own death after attempting to poison a failed Lancelot recruit, Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin, and due to the latter’s distrust and sleight of hand tactics, had ended up poisoning himself. In spite of his ignoble end, Chester had begun his Kingsman career with a deep and abiding love for his country, instituting many reforms throughout the Kingsman organisation to make it more forward-thinking and agile, but also less interventionist. He admired Winston Churchill, Rembrandt paintings, and had a special fondness for Dover where he had spent many happy summers as a child. The puppy he had chosen when he had been a Kingsman recruit had been a King Charles Spaniel named Perry.

The fifth Kingsman agent had been Galahad, who had also been known as Henry ‘Harry’ Patrick Hart. He would have turned 52 in less than four months after V-Day had he not been gunned down by Richmond Valentine outside a small, ignominious church in rural Kentucky. Harry had enjoyed collecting rare butterflies, moths, beetles, and bawdy tabloid covers. When his beloved dog, Mr Pickle, died of pancreatitis, he had him stuffed, mounted, and put on display in his toilet where it never failed to give visiting guests a good scare. He was a functional alcoholic, though he would never admit to it. He had pride and vanity in spades, but it was difficult to argue that such traits were not wholly undeserved.

His mistakes haunted him.

He had only ever loved two people in his life. The first had been a woman he thought he would marry when he was aged 22, until she threw him over for a wealthier, more glamourous man than a supposed tailor. The second had happened almost 30 years later: a 23-year-old boy whose father had died saving Harry’s life seventeen years prior.

In the 24 hours Harry Hart and Eggsy Unwin spent together towards the end of the Lancelot trials, 10 martinis of parabola-like quality were made, achieving peak perfection at number three, and swiftly declining in quality thereafter.

Eggsy hadn't even touched his fifth glass, but Harry, who had built up the tolerance of an elephant, politely imbibed his terribly-made drink with carefully controlled sophistication anyway, because the edges of the world had gone a bit blurry for him by then as well.

After they had drunkenly sloppy but thoroughly satiating sex for the first time, Harry’s hand came to rest on Eggsy’s chest, just over his heart. He counted the steady beats he felt beneath his palm for a full silent minute before he whispered to Eggsy in wonder, “It is as if I’m holding your beating heart in my hand.”

Later, when Eggsy watches Harry die, it is as if his heart were being crushed within it.

 

_____

 

When Eggsy peers out the tiny jet window at the land down below, there isn’t much to distinguish the general Kentucky terrain from what he’s been staring at for the past hour. It’s a sea of rolling green hills and darker green trees, occasionally dotted with a farmhouse or a square patch of tilled soil, with the grey arteries of roads periodically slashing through them, sometimes bisected by a wide brown river.

He asks Geoffrey, the pilot, which one it is and he is told it is the Ohio, winding its way through the central latitude of America just as the Mississippi cuts through it lengthwise.

The little local airstrip in Kentucky on which they have chosen to make their landing is a barely distinguishable patch of crumbling blacktop that simply whimpers into dead grass and dirt, but Geoffrey lands the Kingsman jet smoothly and without incident.

There are dark bruises under his reddened eyes and pallid exhaustion carving deeper lines into his face. Still, when he notices Eggsy looking, he gives a polite, unbothered nod. “Sir.”

“Thanks, Geoff.” Eggsy means it more than just for the piloting. It’s a low-priority mission, and Geoffrey didn’t have to volunteer for it. In fact, it’s one Eggsy shouldn’t have undertaken at all, not when they are all overworked and stretched thin enough to snap from unending weeks and months of putting out fires and seemingly running off their waning steam. But a shadow of the thought kept growing at the back of his mind, as insistent as a malignant tumour, while he tried to sort out anarchy in Riyadh without a royal family and revolts in in Tehran without their Ayatollahs.

Eggsy was losing sleep, his mind conjuring up horrible dreams, each one more nightmarish than the next, until he had had enough and confronted Merlin, not asking for permission so much as informing him out of courtesy.

Merlin had taken one long look at his stubbornly set jaw and peeled off his glasses in order to rub at the sore looking red indentations stamped onto each side of his nose. “You don’t have to be the one to do it personally, lad.”

“Yeah, well, no one else has done!” Eggsy hadn’t meant for it to sound like an accusation, but each syllable that fell from his lips seemed to land with the damaging precision of a dagger. “It’s been almost three fucking months.”

“I am aware,” Merlin had coolly replied in the blistering wrath of Eggsy’s recriminations and effectively doused it. “This may come as a surprise, Eggsy, but body retrieval tends to take a backseat priority when the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. Even agents with indeterminate MIA status have higher priority.”

Eggsy hadn’t apologised for his outburst, but he had taken several deep calming breaths before he said, much more calmly, “I just want him to bring him home.” And then, much to his humiliation, his voice had cracked and all the restraint he’d been harnessing to keep himself whole and untouchable wobbled precariously. “He said he’d come back.”

He had silently begged for Merlin not to comment upon his slip, and though Merlin’s gaze remained dry-eyed and flinty, he had taken pity upon Eggsy in the end, even as he made sure to dress it up as doing Eggsy a significant favour, which, in truth, he was. “You have three days to get in, get the body, and get out. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Eggsy had immediately agreed, his spine straightening and his shoulders angling back as if to better bear the weight of his new burden. “I swear I’ll bring him back.”

“See that you do,” Merlin had said, before turning his chair back to his console and dismissing Eggsy entirely.

Now Eggsy steps out into the sweltering Kentucky heat, already feeling a sweat break out across his skin beneath the unbreathable layers of his suit, squinting beneath an overbearing sun. He shields his eyes and tries to discern what’s around him beyond trees, grass, and the shivering rattle of cicadas, but there’s not much else to glean. There’s a lot of land in America. It stands to reason that not all of it can be interesting.

“Safe travels, sir,” Geoffrey says from the top of the jet’s stairs. “I’ll see you in three day’s time. Happy hunting.”

A bit morbid, but not altogether inaccurate. The landscape of post V-Day America is a shit show. There still isn’t much of a functioning government at the federal level, and the states have each taken matters into their own hands.

The Statesman too, for that matter.

Fifteen minutes after the agreed upon rendezvous time, Eggsy hears the loud rumble of a motorcycle before he sees a man in worn jeans and a leather jacket pulling up to the airstrip on a Harley. He pulls off his helmet to reveal a rugged countenance and a mind-boggling mustache that shamelessly crawls across his upper lip, flicking Eggsy a glance. “Another British invasion?”

Eggsy coolly inclines his head in a manner to indicate he is above all reproach. “This won’t take long.”

“So I heard,” the man snorts, and then casually adds, “We looked for the body too, you know.” He ignores the way Eggsy stiffens. “After all was said and done. Didn’t have much luck. There were a lot of bodies, a lot of fires, and a lot of mass graves since then. What makes you think you’ll do better?”

Unnerved, Eggsy opens his mouth, but he doesn’t have much to say. Truthfully, he doesn’t know. Realistically, he doubts he would. “I just have to try.”

He’s here to bury the past, at any rate, even if it only turns out to be a figurative effigy and an empty coffin.

“The name’s Jack.” Jack punctuates this by hocking up phlegm in his throat and spitting out a wet yellowish globule on the ground by his boots.

Eggsy tries not to wince. Whatever esteem Kingsman held for manners, its values clearly hadn’t spread to its American cousins. “Galahad.”

A slow grin spreads across Jack’s mouth and his dark eyes glint with mischief. “Well, grab a helmet and hop on, Union Jack. Got us a long ride ahead.”

 

_____

 

It takes three hours to reach South Glade via a cracked and pothole-riddled two-lane motorway. Eggsy sees more alert and wary animals lingering on the asphalt than he does anything else save for a graveyard of abandoned cars that have been pushed off to the gutters. Probably for the best. Kingsman suits look very sophisticated on one’s person amidst the worldliest cities, but Eggsy imagines the effect is lost by having to ride on the back of a bike, clinging to the waist of a denim and leather-clad driver in the rural cordons of America.

After they take an unmarked exit and start travelling down a manure-scented rural road for another half hour, more buildings begin to crop up: a petrol station with exorbitant prices, a small library, a post office, and then quite abruptly, a town centre manifests.

Small Town, USA is not all that different from an English village. In spite of the horror of its recent history, South Glade is a very charming representation of what he imagines America to have been like in its halcyon mid-century days. No chain stores and a pristine white bandstand right in the middle of a roundabout that dares to call itself a park. Flowers spilling out of hanging baskets from the ornate wrought iron street lamps. The sparsity of people on its streets could be attributed to the town simply not having that many people to begin with.

Vaguely, Eggsy wonders if these were the same impressions Harry had when he first arrived.

They’ve just missed the morgue hours at the hospital. As the sun starts to sink and casts long shadows on the road, Jack shoots right through the one-strip town to drop Eggsy off at the nearest Best Western on Route 641 with a, “Get some shut eye and be ready at nine,” and an extra loud revving burst of his engine that Eggsy can hear long after Jack rides off into the actual fucking sunset.

With the rumble of the motorbike still ringing in his ears, Eggsy turns to the only other human entity outside the lobby, a grizzled, middle aged man with tan arms who leans against one of the supporting columns of the front drive, a smouldering cigarette pinched between his yellowing fingers. “Pardon me, but can I bum a fag off ya, bruv?” 

“What did you say to me?” the man grunts, a dangerous glint flashing in his eyes.

Eggsy blinks. “Sorry...I was asking if I could have a cigarette.”

The man eyes him suspiciously and Eggsy does his best to appear guileless and bumblingly British until after several long moments, he reluctantly holds out his pack in wordless invitation.

“Cheers, mate!” Eggsy overcompensates as he sticks the fag behind his ear and deftly nicks three more to hide up his sleeve before picking up his travel case.

 _Wanker_ , he thinks as he walks away.

He installs himself in his first story room, peels off his wrinkled suit jacket, and immediately cranks up the rattling AC unit, planting his face in front of the limp trickle of lukewarm air it emits while ignoring the smell of staleness, mold, and cigarette smoke that lingers in room.

When he feels like his blood won’t actually boil in his veins, he takes quick stock of his surroundings, which are as cheap and generic as they come. Some sort of not quite clean beige carpet, a double size bed bearing an ugly floral printed duvet that he vows to only sleep on top of, a plywood nightstand and dresser, the latter of which which supports a small flat screen telly, and a small round table with a single chair and fag tray.

Eggsy fetches ice from the machines situated in a centre opening that bisects the entire building, retrieves a handle of JD from his case, his welcome gift from the man himself, and goes about drinking and smoking through his first night in America, land of the bloody free, whilst flipping through the fuzzy television channels before settling on _Funny Girl_.

When his mobile starts ringing, Eggsy only spares a brief glance at the display before picking up. “Don’t rain on my parade, Rox.”

“What are you talking about?” There is only the briefest of pauses before Roxy decides that the question isn’t worth pursuing. “Nevermind. Someone waited until I was in Tokyo to tell me. I’ve only just heard.”

“Since when are you and Merlin so cosy?”

Roxy ignores him. “Do you really think this is a good idea?”

“Probably not,” he admits. Whether he succeeds or fails, he’s likely to end up heartbroken before it’s over. The very thought, damned if does, damned if he doesn’t, makes him suck in a shaky breath, except he forgets there’s a fag pinched between his lips. Unexpected smoke floods into his lungs, causing him to burst into a fit of coughing.

“...gsy? Are you alright?” She almost politely waits through another series of hacking coughs before she demands with an amusing amount of outrage, “Are you _smoking_?”

“When in Rome, Rox,” Eggsy croaks, blinking back the water in his eyes and wetting his throat with the nearest liquid at hand, which unfortunately happens to be cheap whiskey that only adds to the burning in his gut. “Don’t worry, it ain’t a habit anymore.”

There is another span of worried silence. Eggsy can practically feel Roxy’s concern bleeding through the line. “You’ll call if you need anything, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

It would be a natural time to hang up, but instead Eggsy awkwardly asks, "Any word from yours?"

"No," Roxy says before lapsing into silence, then sucking in a breath, audibly rallying. “So how’s America? Heard you’re working with Statesman. What are they like?”

He blows out a breath and watches Babs sing mournfully about her embezzling man. “It’s...big.” He knows how inadequate that sounds, so he struggles to add more profundity, but he’s no fucking Kerouac. “Vast. Empty. Lots of room for cowboys.”

“Sounds like it suits you.”

“I think they ride motorbikes here instead of taxis. Not much standing on ceremony from the looks of it.”

“They have it worse than us, you know. Something like over seventy percent of their agents were wiped out.”

“Christ.”

“So don’t be too hard on them. And take care of yourself,” Roxy says before repeating, “And call me if something comes up, or whenever you simply feel like it. I may not get to answer right away, but I’ll eventually return your call.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you too, Rox.” He doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing, and anyway, it would only have been executed with the highest degree of fondness. “Swing by the hot springs while you’re there, yeah? You deserve some time to unwind.”

“No time for that,” Roxy says, “But I will accept one of your massages when we’re both home.”

“Deal. Sayonara, Lancelot.”

“Oh god. What is the Yank equivalent? _Y’all have a good one_?” Roxy says in a wretched accent.

“Dunno. Haven’t received a proper one yet to really tell.” And very likely never would given the brief length of his stay.

“Rude.”

Strangely, he doesn’t really mind it. He’s comfortable in the spitting, vitriolic realities that exist when the thin veneers of civility wear away. “Bit refreshing actually.”

“You would think that.”

“Goodnight, Rox,” he is sure to say properly.

He can feel her exasperated look from thousands of miles away, but her tone is filled with nothing but warmth. “Good afternoon, Eggsy.”

 

_____

 

But not too long after, the cheer of Roxy’s call fades away and Eggsy’s mood drops precipitously. The water stained popcorn ceiling hardens the edges of reality: he’s really to do this.

In the days after V-Day when the shock and adrenaline had barely started to wane, all Eggsy could think about was that somewhere in the world, Harry’s body still existed, as if it were simply an empty home patiently awaiting the return of its owner, not an abandoned, decaying piece of meat.

The problem is that while his brain knows what his mission is, his heart does not. His brain understands that he will be bringing back a lifeless body to inter in English soil. His heart beats faster at the thought of seeing Harry again, like it expects to see Harry’s warm eyes and faintest of smiles, expects to feel Harry’s large, long fingered hands rest upon his hips and draw him into the sweetest of gin kisses.

He moves over to the windows and pushes aside the heavy blackout curtains he had drawn to peer out at the mostly empty car park. The grizzled man is still there at the far end of it, leaning against the same column, still smoking. It’s an odd sight. Eggsy doesn’t know what the man is waiting for. Maybe he’s waiting for nothing. Maybe standing around and smoking is just something he does to pass the time.

“If the man stops smoking before the count of seven,” Eggsy mutters under his breath, “Then I’ll find Harry tomorrow.”

It’s a stupid little game he used to play with himself since he'd been young.

“One.”

If he walks past the raven before it flies away, then he will have no homework.

“Two.”

If he runs past the lamp before the seagull in the air flies over it, his Mum would buy him sweets on their next trip to the shop.

“Three.”

If he made it up to the top of the stairs before Mrs Henderson yanked open her curtains, then Dad would be home for Christmas.

“Four.”

The grizzled man takes an extra long draw off his cigarette, causing the end of it to flare brightly. There’s so little left of it that his fingers cover the entire remaining length.

“Five.”

The grizzled man lets the smoke stream out of his nostrils. What a stubborn bastard.

“Six.”

The grizzled man stares at his cigarette and finally chucks it at the ground.

Eggsy breathes out, relaxing, internal calm restored.

At least until the man pulls out his pack and fishes out another one, lighting up anew.

 

_____

 

The next morning sees Eggsy terribly hung over but showered and changed into a fresh if identical suit. He forages the meagre continental breakfast offerings in the hotel lobby while he waits. Jack doesn’t even get there until twenty minutes after nine, and when he walks in, Eggsy greets him by slurping his terrible bagged Lipton tea out of a styrofoam cup and then stuffing a whole mini corn muffin into his mouth.

Jack isn’t fazed, even going so far as to reach into one of the silver warming trays to grab a stiff disc of pancake, rolling it up burrito-style and ripping into half of it in one go. Eggsy is almost impressed.

“Come on, Union Jack,” Jack says, not even finishing swallowing yet. “Morgue opens at ten. It’s an hour’s drive from here.”

“Most of the time, people are simply referring to a Union _flag_ ,” Eggsy points out, but Jack doesn’t seem to really care.

It’s another long, stiflingly hot ride on the back of the bike while the unrelenting sun soaks into his dark suit. Eggsy sweats inside the helmet. Feels his shirt clinging damply to his back. The product he’s put into his hair feels disgusting dripping down his temples and neck. The heat fogs up his visor, obscuring his view. He’s beginning to see why Statesman doesn’t bother with such trappings.

The hospital that services South Glade and many other little towns revolving around it is tiny, underfunded, and inundated with patients still recovering from V-Day. Located in the basement, the morgue is still unfortunately one of its most overtaxed departments thanks to Kentucky’s decree that bodies cannot be buried or cremated until they have been successfully identified. As a result, the municipality had to bring in extra refrigeration units, stacking more than one body per drawer, and even still, most of the bodies had to be shipped off for storage at other facilities.

Understandably, the attendant on duty is not very impressed with either Eggsy and Jack.

“He should have had his licence on him and certain personal effects. Glasses, a gold signet ring. He’s about one point nine meters tall, suffered a GSW to the head,” Eggsy insists. “Check again, please? Henry DeVere. That’s D-E-V—”

“There’s no one like that who’s come through here,” the attendant says in a thick Kentucky drawl, flatly cutting Eggsy off.

The swift and total refusal, divorced of even the illusion of effort, starts stirring up the embers of his anger. “Then what about your John Does?”

She must think he’s some young, innocent boy because a little more sympathy seeps into her expression. “Honey, all we got are John Does up in here. ID’ed bodies get sent down for cremation. If your man was ID’ed, then his next of kin would have been notified already and the body picked up or the remains shipped back.”

Eggsy wants to grind his teeth. “But that’s just it. No one’s informed us. This was his last known location. We’ve been trying to find out what happened to the church victims!”

“Your man was at that church?” the attendant says, arching a brow sceptically. Eggsy can see whatever good will he’s earned with her is swiftly diminishing.

“No! I mean...yeah, but he wasn’t a member! He was just there to…to....”

“As you can see, ma’am,” Jack steps in smoothly, effectively shutting Eggsy up. “My friends aren’t from around here. Henry was a church-going man and wanted to find one while he was in town. I don’t think he knew what he was getting into.” The woman still doesn’t look completely convinced, so Jack adds, clamping a heavy, callused hand on Eggsy’s shoulder, “This one here is his husband.”

Eggsy grits his teeth, but at least the sympathy has swung back round in his favour. Not that it does him any good whatsoever. “I’m sorry, honey. I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that your man ain’t here. It’s possible he got sent down to one of the other sites, but I know the faces of every single body in this system by now and there’s no one that matches his description.”

“You won’t even check?” Eggsy asks in disbelief.

“No, and you wanna know why?” the woman says, looking him dead in the eye. “All them drawers behind me are filled with babies, kids. This one here’s been designated for minors. They made up most of the casualties, followed up by older folks, women. Men like yours? Maybe about twenty tops.”

Eggsy blinks, swallowing back the nausea and bile still swirling around his throat and stomach from his ill-advised indulgences. “Sorry.” He doesn’t know what to add after that, so he just says, “Sorry,” again before leaving her alone.

Next stop is Site D, an hour and a half away, or where southwest Kentucky is housing its unidentified males, aged 20 through 60. There are only twelve bodies left when they get there, eight bodies having been claimed since the hospital attendant last checked in.

Eggsy insists on personally seeing each grey, waxen face emerging from the drawers. There are young men his age. Older men that are closer to Harry’s. Some bear the clear causes of their death on their bodies: gunshots and knives and severe blunt force traumas. Some deaths are a little less clear, from all appearances perfectly unmarred but for the hastily sewn up Y-incisions across their torsos.

None of the men are Harry. Eggsy doesn’t know whether he’s frustrated or relieved.

Jack trails silently behind him. He doesn’t say _I told you so_ , and nothing about him implies anything of the sort, which is good because Eggsy feels numb with defeat, even though every single person has told him this very thing not only could but probably would happen.

When they emerge back out into the thick heat of the parking lot, Eggsy stops and stares at the kerb, not quite sure of his next steps. Jack stops beside him.

“Wanna go see the church?” he asks Eggsy. “It’s been abandoned to the animals. Funny how rumours get started. People round here believe it’s Ground Zero for God’s punishment. No one even wants to loot the place.”

No, he wants to violently shout back, every instinct in him recoiling from the very notion. But once the initial impulse passes, the more morbidly curious part of him that is hungry for any last remaining scrap of connection to Harry yearns for more.

“Yeah, alright.”

 

_____

 

At first glance, South Glade Mission Church looks as it has always done: a small, rustic, steepled structure, almost humble in appearance. There’s a distinct sense of neglect and emptiness around the building. Late afternoon sun glints off the cross that punctures the cloudless blue sky. The front doors have been left ajar.

Eggsy walks up to it and only hesitates for a moment before taking a peek inside, unwilling to even touch the doors to open them further. From the small sliver he peers through, he can only see a long narrow stretch of crooked wooden pews within, highlighted by the sun that streaks through the Gothic windows. The bodies had long since been removed. He wonders if the dark spots on the wood are patches of dried blood or just the natural grain. He can’t smell anything but dust.

He tries closing his eyes to overlay the images he remembers from Harry’s glasses, but it’s hard to reconcile them with the reality of the place after the fact. Maybe too much time has gone by. Maybe he’s seen too much death and violence elsewhere. Maybe it’s because being here isn’t really his experience, so he isn’t allowed to access its inherent horrors.

Nothing else stirs, no revelation falls upon him. Eggsy isn’t sure what he expected would happen, maybe a miracle. It’s just an empty building now.

Disappointed, or maybe relieved, he turns around and tries to picture himself just walking out of the church. Jack is parked on the street, leaning against his bike, but with his back to Eggsy to afford him some semblance of privacy. There are still cars out front. Eggsy can’t help but wonder if some of their owners met their gruesome deaths at Harry’s lethal hand.

He takes a few steps forward, tries to picture Valentine and Gazelle standing before him, flanked by their goons with guns.

He imagines the words being spoken.

_Sounds good to me._

_Well, this ain’t that kind of movie._

Valentine raises his gun and hides his face in his other arm.

His whole world narrows to the end of that barrel. This can’t possibly be real. A dream, a movie after all—

The crack of gunfire is sharp, deafening.

Eggsy jerks and stares up at the blue, blue sky from where he lies flat on his back on the asphalt. It’s not very comfortable. Grains of sand and gravel dig into his scalp. From the edges of his vision, he can see the jagged edges of the tree tops.

“If a bird flies overhead in the next ten seconds,” he whispers, “I’ll find a clue that will lead me to Harry.”

He counts slowly. He stares up at the sky so long, he feels dizzy, disoriented, like he could fall right into it if he doesn’t keep reaffirming that every inch of his back is firmly plastered along the earth.

A flicker of movement draws his attention and his heart skips a beat, but what he at first thinks is a majestic bird soaring in the skies above him turns out to simply be a distant commercial airplane steadily trekking across the sky.

Eventually, he hears footsteps crunch along the gravel and Jack’s head pops into his vision, looking down at him. The sun obscures most of his face, but from what Eggsy can see of his eyes, they are mildly concerned. Everyone seems to be when it comes to him these days. “Hungry?”

As if Jack had invoked some sort of spell with the word, Eggsy is suddenly aware of how cavernously empty his stomach is, so much so that he almost feels ill. A part of him marvels how normal his body insists on behaving, being hungry and thirsty and hot, when he feels dead in every other way.

“What’s the best thing to eat around here?”

 

_____

 

The best thing on offer turns out to be cheap, cold beer, crispy chips, and a thick burger served up rare in a dank little American bar that’s heavy on the wood decor, has an actual jukebox and licence plates nailed to the walls, and a surprisingly packed house of patrons who obscure the air with clouds of cigarette fumes to drown out the No Smoking signs still pinned above every fire extinguisher. Eggsy sheds his jacket and tie and rolls up his shirt sleeves, then proceeds to stuff his face at a steady pace without bothering with any of the civility Harry had so insisted upon at meals, and is gratified to see Jack all but mirroring him across the table.

When Jack stuffs the last bite of burger into his mouth and drains the last of his beer, he sits back and emits a sated sigh. “So I guess it’s back home tomorrow?”

“Back home tomorrow,” Eggsy confirms, even if it tastes like ashes in his mouth. “I had a limited window.”

“Sorry nothing turned up.”

“Not your fault.” It just was. Eggsy trails a finger down the condensation of his pint. “Except for that shite you call whiskey, JD.”

To his mild surprise, Jack throws his head back and laughs, revealing gleaming white teeth, dark eyes crinkling at the corners. He’s actually rather handsome, especially when he smiles like that. “You disparaging my namesake, Union Jack?”

“You should come to London.” Eggsy finds himself returning that grin. “We’ll educate you on what real libations are.”

“Never really wanted to see London,” Jack says, before giving Eggsy a long, dark look that feels heavy with smouldering possibility. “But I’m starting to see the appeal.”

And yeah, Jack isn’t subtle, but Eggsy doesn’t need to be cosseted these days. The prospect suddenly sounds tempting. A few more traded innuendos and an all but spoken invitation to accompany him back to his hotel room for an invigourating and meaningless shag to complete the vice trifecta that christens his first American tour. Yeah, maybe that’s just what he needs.

He’s about to open his mouth to to do just that when the passing waitress catches his eye and time slows down.

She’s about in her thirties, maybe closer to her forties, though tragedy has a way of aging people faster.

And like most people these days, she looks weary, with a long set of butterfly stitches running down the side of her face to hold together what looks like a nasty gash.

There’s a large patch of gauze entirely covering one eye.

Whatever she had suffered on V-Day, it had come breathlessly close to ending her life.

But she had survived.

His heart starts beating faster. Hope springs in his heart and he wants nothing more than to push his chair back and run off there and then.

“What about the hospital?” Eggsy hears himself ask.

To his credit, Jack hardly misses a beat. “What about it?”

And the world snaps back into its regular pace and rhythm. Grease on his fingers. The smoke. The country rock music.

“What if the reason why we can’t find Harry at the morgue is because he was never taken there in the first place?” Eggsy says, turning back to Jack, growing more and more excited. “What if he’s still alive? What if they took him to hospital instead?”

Jack doesn’t really share his burgeoning enthusiasm. “It was point blank to the head. No one misses that kind shot, not even someone like Valentine. There’s no coming back from that,” he says not unkindly as he easily dismantles every hope Eggsy’s built up in the last few seconds. “Besides, we canvassed the hospital, and there was nothing. If he had his ID on him like you said, they would have alerted Kingsman long before now.”

He knows Jack is trying to be helpful, that this is his way of being kind, not letting Eggsy continue to delude himself into chasing down more ghosts after already wasting a day on a fool’s errand, but Eggsy can’t leave any stone unturned. He just can’t. “I still want to go back and see.”

“Visiting hours are long over.”

“Tomorrow then.”

“No,” Jack says before sitting up straighter. “First thing tomorrow morning, you’re getting back on that plane to England.”

Eggsy frowns, instantly feeling churlish. “You’re not my minder.”

“Actually, I am,” Jack says and gives Eggsy a smirk when he sees Eggsy’s nostrils flare in indignation. “It’s my punishment for going off-book on a prior mission and I’m not really eager to push any more buttons right now. I’ll hog-tie and carry you to that plane myself if I have to.”

Eggsy finds himself gripping his paper napkin so tightly he’s tearing it up into thin paper shreds. But he’s grown up a bit. He’s better at managing his hot temper so that he doesn’t immediately start shooting off at the mouth or engaging in something satisfyingly vengeful but ultimately self destructive. Not so prone to driving off with cars that aren’t his, no matter how tempting Jack’s motorbike may be.

So he just sits back in his seat and allows his shoulders to slump, but still can’t help adding a quiet, “Fuck you, mate,” as congenial as you please.

Jack finally eases back with his beer bottle. A brief, wistful look crosses his features, but there’s a dry smile that lilts at the corners of his mouth. “Oh what could’ve been.”

 

_____

 

The next morning, Eggsy stares at the clock in the lobby that sits over the mantel. Half eight. Jack will be here at nine (but most likely later) to take him back to the plane. In less than five hours, he will be up in the skies, crossing an ocean, and leaving behind every last possibility, hope, and fear he’s carried around with him for months.

So, he makes a decision.

It’s not hard to find an owner-less automobile. It’s a lot more challenging to find one that hasn’t had all its petrol completely siphoned off, but finally he comes across an old VW buggy parked behind a skip with a quarter of a tank still left. It takes a bit of getting used to, driving an automatic transmission, and on the wrong side of the road as well, but soon Eggsy’s pulling into the hospital car park just as the tank sputters on the fumes it has left.

He starts off with front reception, walking up to them with his best boyish smile. “I have a loved one who may have been brought here on V-Day. He was one of the victims from South Glade Mission Church.” He almost wants to frantically add a disclaimer when he sees the two receptionists trade a look with each other. “Are there any unidentified victims still here as patients?”

“Plenty, yes,” one of them says after a long bout of hesitation, “But sir, nobody from the church ever came through here.”

“His driver’s licence should have said Henry DeVere,” Eggsy says desperately, planting his sweaty palms on the counter. “D-E-V-E-R-E. He suffered a gunshot wound to the head. He’s one point nine metres tall. Thirteen stone...I mean...eighty-six kilograms? I don’t know what that is in pounds. He’s got brown and grey hair. Early fifties. His personal effects should include a nice suit, a gold ring. A lighter...no, not that. A...a watch? A nice Bremont watch? Any of this ring a bell?”

The receptionist dutifully types in the details he provides but only shakes her head. “There’s no one by that name who is a patient here.”

He can’t bear to hear another negation, pushing off the counter and heading for the lifts as one of the receptionists begins shouting after him, “Sir!” undoubtedly attracting more unwanted attention, but he ignores her as the lift doors close on the approaching security guard’s face.

In the ICU, Eggsy starts up with the same round of questioning and is met with the same blank-eyed stares and ignorance, even when he pulls up Harry’s agent profile photo on his mobile.

“I want to see them,” Eggsy insists, voice growing louder when he’s met with a complete lack of action. Why weren’t these stupid people helping him? “I want to see all the John Does. I need to see their faces!”

By then, security’s caught up with him, two large men with guns in their holsters and kind but immovable expressions and voices that do not allow disobedience. “Let’s go now, sir. Quietly. Don’t want to make no trouble.”

They clamp their hands around each of Eggsy’s arms. They aren’t a match for him, but he’s not about to go ballistic in a hospital in front of doctors, nurses, and patients.

“Please!” he implores the room at large as the security guards start walking him back to the lift. “I just need to find him! Anything you know, anything at all! I just need something!”

“I think I may...I think I may know something.”

Eggsy immediately tenses and digs his heels into the linoleum, throwing his weight against the hold the guards have on him to break their grip, too fast to be recaptured as he dodges their swinging arms and races back to the meek little nurse who spoke. She looks at Eggsy like he may attack her at any second, so he tries to visibly calm down, pulling up Harry’s photo with shaking fingers to shower her. “Please. Anything you know. Anything at all.”

She studies the image intently, but there’s no spark of recognition on her face. “I was one of the few on staff that day who’s still...still alive.” She swallows and slowly blinks, trying to keep the remembered horror at bay. “There were a few of them that came in from the church. I don’t think many of them made it through. And then...and then the signal happened and we were slammed and everyone was either dead or injured. I think, afterwards...we sent many of them to Louisville. The worst ones. We couldn’t handle much here. A lot of things got lost in the shuffle. I know it ain’t much, but if he’s still alive and he’s not here, then he may have been sent there.”

It’s not much, but it’s something. It’s more than what he had before. “Thank you. _Thank you_.”

This time when the guards take hold of him, Eggsy lets them show him out of the hospital until he’s back beneath the burning hot sun, trembling with some unnamed disturbance and unsure why.

He watches a new family emerge from the front entrance of the hospital, a young father pushing his wife in a wheelchair, their newborn cradled in her arms. Cheerful balloons have been tied to the arm of her chair; they merrily bob and sway in the wind.

“If they make it to their car without stopping,” Eggsy says to himself, “Then Harry is still alive.”

He doesn’t breathe as he watches the father look both ways in the lot, but not pausing. No cars pulling in or leaving. He watches the family weave between what few cars are parked, navigating their way to the station wagon parked in the third row. Not stopping even once, not needing to.

Whatever he’s filled with, it’s something he can barely contain. It’s making him light headed. It’s dangerous.

Eggsy glances at his watch. Jack’s probably already arrived at the hotel. He probably waited in the lobby for awhile, then went to knock on his room door, then probably broke into his room to find all of his belongings still there, unpacked, but not Eggsy. It wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together.

As if right on cue, his glasses beep, and once Eggsy accepts the incoming line, Merlin’s voice fills his ears. “Galahad, I was just informed by Statesman that you are not en route to the plane as you are scheduled to be. As you agreed to be.”

“Right.” Eggsy takes a deep breath. “About that, Merlin….”

“No, Galahad. I don’t want to hear excuses,” Merlin cuts him off. “I want you to get your arse back to London. I’ve got your location. Stay put. Statesman will come and get you.”

“Sure thing, guv,” Eggsy says cheerfully before shutting off the feed from his glasses and flinging them into the bushes. After a moment’s consideration, he tosses in his mobile after them.

He checks his watch again. He can be in Louisville in three and a half hours if he floors it. And if he can find transport with enough petrol.

As if it were fate, his gaze roams and lands upon a beautiful, gleaming red BMW bearing a medical doctor’s designation on its plates, parked right up front, just begging to be driven off with. A quick check at the dashboard showed a full tank. Standard transmission even. It has to be a bloody sign.

Five minutes and one beautiful hot-wire job (if he did say so himself) later, Eggsy’s burning rubber on the road.

The sun is at his back, the tyres are eating up the empty road, and there’s just the endless stretch of Kentucky, and the faintest whisper of hope, that lie ahead of him.


End file.
